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TRAVEL ADVISORY: CORRESPONDENT'S REPORT

By STEVEN ERLANGER

Published: December 4, 1994

MOSCOW—
THE biggest problem with Aero flot these days besides discomfort, chaos, unpredictable schedules, poor security and overriding uncertainty about safety -- is that no one really has a very good handle on what Aeroflot actually is.

The Soviet Union's Aeroflot was by far the world's largest airline, serving both domestic and international routes, until the end of 1992, when the empire died. With the division of the country, regionalization and privatization, the old Aeroflot has been broken up into nearly 400 separate companies. There is only one company still legally named Aeroflot, Aeroflot Russian International Airlines, which does not fly domestically. It had a spotless accident record for eight years until a pilot's son getting an impromptu flying lesson crashed a new Airbus A-310 into a Siberian hill in March, killing 75 people.

Of the other hundreds of companies operating domestically in Russia, products of the Aeroflot breakup, some are so small as to be almost absurdly unviable, without the resources to buy spare parts or keep up maintenance. There is pressure, however, in the new market, to ignore regulations and cram in as many passengers and as much freight as the plane can hold.

Then they tend to fly around a series of airports that are in dire need of maintenance and technical improvements, like radar, to allow instrument and night landings.

As an ordinary passenger, it is almost impossible to know what airline you are actually flying, and who is responsible. Some planes are repainted with airline names, but most regional companies still operate under the name Aeroflot and the planes look identical.

So far this year, in what has been a bad one for Russian flying, there have been 18 crashes killing 318 people, according to the Interfax news agency. (Last year, there were 11 crashes, killing 221.) But mostly these are small, old, propeller-driven planes dating from around World War II, flying short routes in tough weather.

In April, the International Airlines Passenger Association strongly recommended that travelers avoid domestic air travel here. Last July, the American Embassy stirred considerable anger in Russia when it instructed its staff to try to avoid flying domestic airlines and to find alternative transport, like the train. So in August, the Federal Aviation Administration sent experts to look over the situation in cooperation with their Russian counterparts.

Last month, their joint report called for urgent Russian Government action to retrain personnel and improve inspections and air traffic control. Otherwise, the report said, Russian airlines will soon fail to meet international standards. The American Embassy then withdrew its instruction to staff.

The report pointed to the most urgent problems and put a price tag of $170 million to correct them. A broader Russian plan to overhaul civil aviation through 1995 is estimated to cost $2 billion, but that much money will not be found in the budget.

On major tourist routes, however, there is better quality. The planes that fly between Moscow and St. Petersburg, for instance, are refurbished to approach Western standards and are probably safer than the night train, which is plagued by robbers who gas sleeping passengers and then loot their compartments.

There are a few other private airlines, most notably Transaero, that fly Western planes with Western-style service to places like Kiev, Novosibirsk and Abu Dhabi.

International Aeroflot has also leased Western planes -- in 1992, five Airbus A-310's (one of which crashed) and in May, two Boeing B-767-300 airliners. The airline recently announced plans for further leases to replace its TU-134's and TU-154's, some of them more than 20 years old, on medium- and short-haul flights to Europe. The reason is not so much their obsolescence, though the commercial director, Nikolai Lebedev, says the planes are "worn out," as the need to meet stricter regulations on noise emission. TU-154's are already banned from Berlin because of noise.

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